more years. Two times he enters the battlefi eld again,
however, and there he meets his son and entrusts him
with the rulership of Portebaliart. Malefer later conquers
the Oriental empire of his grandfather Terramer and mar-
ries the queen of the Amazons, Penteselie, who delivers
a child with the name Johann who will continue with the
religious struggle against the heathens. When Terramer’s
son Matribuleiz attacks France anew, Willehalm returns
from his hermitage, a move that immediately convinces
the Saracens, reminded of their previous defeat, to return
home. Willehalm erects a monastery near Muntbasiliere
where he will eventually meet his death.
This continuatio was, along with Wolfram’s epic,
highly popular and is extant in thirteen manuscripts
and twenty-nine fragments. Ulrich relied in part on
the French tradition of the chansons de gestes (heroic
songs), which are focused on Guillaume d’Orange. The
Augsburg citizen Otto der Bogner supplied Ulrich, as
he indicates in his Rennewart, with the manuscripts of
the French texts (vv. 10270–10282). Ulrich probably
composed his works for the royal court of the Hohen-
staufen family.
See also Eilhart von Oberg; Gottfried von Straßburg;
Wolfram von Eschenbach
Further Reading
Grubmüller, Klaus. “Probleme einer Fortsetzung.” Zeitschrift für
deutsches Altertum 114 (1985): 338–348.
McDonald, William C. The Tristan Story in German Literature
of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Lewiston,
Maine: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.
Spiewok, Wolfgang, ed. Das Tristan-Epos Gottfrieds von Straß-
burg. Mit der Fortsetzung des Ulrich von Türheim. Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1989.
Ulrich von Türheim. Rennewart, ed. A. Hübner. Berlin: Weid-
mann, 1938; 2d ed., 1964.
——. Tristan, ed. Th. Kerth. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979.
Westphal-Schmidt, Christa. Studien zum Rennewart Ulrichs von
Türheim. Frankfurt am Main: Haage und Herchen, 1979.
Albrecht Classen
URBAN II, POPE
(c. 1035–1099, r. 1088–1099)
Pope Urban II (Odo of Lagery, Eudes de Châtillon)
was a church reformer and founder of the crusading
movement. Urban was a native of France and was de-
scended from a noble family of Châtillon–sur–Marne,
near Soissons; Odo was his baptismal name. During his
early school days at Reims, he came under the infl uence
of Saint Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian order,
who remained a potent infl uence in shaping his goals
and values even after he had become pope. Odo’s early
career followed a pattern common among young clerics
of noble lineage. After becoming archdeacon of Reims
by 1160, he abandoned his career among the secular
clergy and entered the monastery of Cluny. There, too,
he advanced rapidly. By c. 1070 he was prior of Cluny;
then Pope Gregory VII recruited him into the papal
service in 1079–1080 and soon named him cardinal-
bishop of Ostia.
Odo served Gregory diligently, at times at consider-
able peril to himself, notably when he was a papal leg-
ate in Germany during some of the darkest days of the
pope’s struggle against King Henry IV. When Gregory
died at Salerno on 25 May 1085, Odo seemed a likely
successor, but the choice fell instead on Abbot Desid-
erius of Monte Cassino, who reigned briefl y as Pope
Victor III. Shortly before his death (in 1087), Victor
recommended that Odo be elected to succeed him. On
12 March 1088, the cardinals who had assembled at
Terracina complied with Victor’s suggestion, and Odo
was crowned as Pope Urban II the same day.
The papacy was at this point in dire straits. Since
Rome and the patrimony of Saint Peter were in the hands
of Henry IV’s supporters, papal revenues were greatly
reduced, an antipope (Clement III) had the backing of
the emperor, and the church reform movement seemed
to be faltering. The great achievement of Urban’s pon-
tifi cate was to redress and, in large measure, to reverse
this situation.
Urban was in many ways far more successful in
implementing the papal reform program than Gregory
VII had ever been. He achieved this in part by an un-
remitting round of meetings with bishops, the clergy,
and powerful laymen, in which he preached, argued,
bargained, and cajoled to induce his hearers to accept
the main planks of the reformers’ platform—to refrain
from simoniacal appointments to church offi ces, to re-
store church property to clerical control, and to commit
the clergy at every level to celibacy. At the same time,
Urban sought, with considerable success, to reduce the
political tension resulting from the confrontations that
had marked the pontifi cate of Gregory VII. In place of
confrontation, Urban offered negotiation; instead of
demands, he advanced proposals; and he preferred to
outmaneuver his opponents rather than challenge them
directly.
Urban saw clearly that his reform program could
succeed in the long run only if it was securely anchored
in the church’s legal structure. Accordingly, he devoted
a great deal of time and effort to persuading church
councils to adopt the principal tenets of his program as
church law. He also lavished time and attention on his
role as supreme judge in the ecclesiastical court system,
and his decisions became an integral part of the canoni-
cal jurisprudence of later generations.
Urban is best-known, however, as the pope who pro-
claimed the First Crusade. At the council of Clermont on
27 November 1095, Urban called on the knights, nobles,URBAN II, POPE